PressEthic

A Wall Street Journal article rather confusingly reports (login required) today that a Morgan Stanley money manager is trying to end the Sulzberger family's control over the New York Times Co.. Hassan Elmasry wants to restructure the ownerhsip of the company's stock to eliminate privilaged stockholders whose votes currently count for more than their holdings dictate. This would mean the Sulzberger family, the publishers of the New York Times, would no longer have nearly as much control over the company. The Times itself mentions the conflict briefly today, but the story does not report any grand statements.

What would it mean for the Sulzberger family to renounce its control? The WSJ's article includes a brief statement that "The dual-class structure is relatively common among media companies in the U.S., and defenders say it preserves the editorial independence of media outlets," but the paper doesn't elaborate. Neither does the Times' article.

So far, the Times has resisted the cutbacks to which other newspaper chains have succumbed. A bitter post about the issue on The National Review Online's media blog champions the Sulzberger family's potential exit as a good riddance, citing recent scandals like Jayson Blair's and Judith Miller's. But are these events reason enough to dismantle the power structure out of which also came populist victories from the Pentagon Papers to the exposure of the NSA wiretapping program?

Neither the Times nor the WSJ make a big deal out of the story, but it seems like they should. As two billionaires eye the LA Times and the Tribune Co., the question of newspaper ownership is heating up. It is time for America's darling paper to weigh in.